About the idea of a clash between cultures, between civilisations, I don’t believe in it. It’s something some political leaders tried to use, and that the media tried and are still trying to sell us, in order to simplify the world and their work.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.

God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

All empires come to an end, and the American one is no exception.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

I’m not a reality-TV kind of guy. But it’s almost like we’re living in a reality show. Every day in this country, everybody keeps worrying about the deterioration of America, and it’s like a big reality show.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

I’m thrilled to have Corona join me on my ‚X100PRE‘ Tour to give my fans a taste of Corona Estereo Beach and showcase their support of Latin music. It’s not solely about the music – it’s about the culture, creativity, and contributing to the movement that connects us all together.

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

Everybody is entertained to death.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

I’m not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

Every video I’m in, every magazine cover, they stretch you; they make you perfect. It’s not real life.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

Liverpool people are famous for liking clothes and fashion; they are very social and lively people, and we know that they like clothes.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don’t care attitude about clothes. You don’t care, you just do it and it looks great.

Obscenity comes from grime.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities – which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

Many people in the western world are spoiled by the conveniences of our culture.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.

Being a Puerto Rican artist, I support all kinds of projects that are developed on my beautiful island that in some way or another put our Puerto Rican flag up.

The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

I play a nobody in Japan.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.